The truth about expired food: how best-before dates create a waste mountain

What happens if you ignore expiry dates altogether? One man did that for a year, without ill effects – but his approach is debatable

Would you eat a six-month-old yoghurt? This is a question you may have asked if you read the recent story about a US grocer and his year-long experiment eating expired food.

It started in October 2016, when Scott Nash, founder of the Mom’s Organic Market chain of grocery stores, wanted to make a smoothie. He likes his with yoghurt. As he was at his holiday cabin in Virginia, though, the only pot he had to hand was one he had inadvertently left behind on his last trip there, six months earlier. He opened it. No mould, no smell. He decided to take the plunge and dumped the yoghurt in the blender. “I drank and waited,” he wrote on his blog. And nothing happened.